As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either.
FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
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Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
In theory, yes. But few people actually do because it is a painful experience. The IRS' documentation isn't actually bad, it is just that the tax system itself is incredibly (and needlessly) complicated. For example, you'd need to hand-enter every stock trade (even automated re-investments) even though your broker likely already electronically sent this information to the IRS. Using a digital solution they can often…
Also, one might ask "why doesn't the IRS just send you a pre-filled copy of the forms, and you only correct them if they're wrong?". The answer is "because Congress passed a law saying they can't".
Doing the next step of the root cause analysis leads to "Intuit lobbied Congress and the IRS hard enough that they passed a law, and the IRS conspired to change their procedures".
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#63As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either. ht…
> The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent
The argument I've heard is that so righteous indignation over the "staggeringly high" taxes "stolen from the hardworking American people" or whatever. This is one of the same arguments as to why sales taxes shouldn't be included in the shelf price of an item or service.
Except it doesn't work. People can be mad about taxes regardless of whether they're easy or hard to file. (Paying taxes is straightforward; the vast majority of us have it done for us from our paychecks every interval.) And where I live, public votes to raise the sales tax for various projects, often public transit, rarely if ever fail.
It seems to me just to be an excuse to not actually deal with our busted as hell tax collection system because that system benefits people who themselves have an excuse to rile people up about taxes.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#64Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?
It is quite possible to do them yourself especially if your taxes are relatively simple - and in a lot of other countries you'll just be mailed a bill or credit depending on how much your withholding was along with a receipt to review if you think they messed up somehow. American and Canada are held hostage by tax software lobbyists though.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#65The fact that our government doesn't have the collective intelligence to just mail the tax bill using the information it already knows, with the option for the recipient to submit corrections/deductions, is a testament to the utter failure of governance in the US. Fortunately having an ineffective government can often be a feature instead of a bug.
Idk. I think the IRS gets the better end of the stick here. They have you tell them how much you owe. If you report more than they knew about great they made money. If you tell them less than they knew about, then they'll audit you assuming the difference is large enough (and there being a high likelihood of winning)
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me know if you find anyone that is better. I'm sick of TaxAct premium for the same reason. I'm ready to go back to doing my taxes by hand and mailing them in. (I'm old enough to remember doing that - it is faster than doing it on the computer except for the one year I forgot to copy line 13 of form 1234A to line 56b of form 9876B) So many dark patters where the software is pretending to take time doing a complex…
FreeTaxUsa is great for most usecases, including stock sales. It is free for federal filing, state is a bit extra ($10)
I like them for the most part, but FTU tricked me this year by forcing me to upload certain forms for a state EV tax credit, and then just completely ignoring those uploaded forms and not sending them to my state tax agency. I only noticed it because I went over the final packet of state tax forms and noticed the ones I uploaded weren't included.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#67As i mentioned on another thread[1], that's one of those American things that really don't make any sense after spending more than a few seconds about it. There is no legitimate excuse for things to be this bad. The best I've heard is that paying taxes being hard is good because it reminds you how much money you give the government, so you are more attentive how it's spent, but it doesn't really make sense either. ht…
Thank Grover Norquist for that. Arguably he has had far more effect on this than the pittance Intuit has spent buying politicians.
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#68Did my taxes this year using TurboTax like always. Sold some stocks this year and all of a sudden I am paying $90 for TurboTax "Premium" to put a couple additional entries in the 1040. What a racket. Next year I'm going to file using something else. This has gone on too long.
Dirty secret: all versions of TurboTax have all the forms - you can just switch to form mode and enter the values yourself into the forms.
Even dirtier secret - the government is legally required to publish all the forms in an accessible manner. You can just download them without ever even installing any Intuit software.
Just to back this up with facts - here are the braille and spanish language offerings which took all of two seconds of googling:
https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/irs-tax-forms-in-braille-and-...
https://apps.irs.gov/app/picklist/list/formsPublications.htm...
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#69Is there a way to do your taxes without paying any money?
For most folks, CashApp Tax works fine. Its 100% Free. I have used it since it came out (originally Credit Karma Tax).
Re: FTC sues Intuit for its deceptive TurboTax “free” filing campaign
#70I'm curious how independent the FTC is from political pressure and lobbyists? In the way there is a revolving door with the SEC, is there a revolving door at the FTC?
Yes. The FTC, BigLaw, and tech are highly interconnected.
> Public Citizen found that just over 75 percent of top FTC officials (31 out of 41) over the past two decades have either left the agency to serve corporate interests confronting FTC issues, joined the agency after serving corporate interests on these issues, or both.
https://www.citizen.org/article/ftc-big-tech-revolving-door-...